Wire, solder, heat-shrink, and cable ties
I’ve been wiring things up today. Most of the power droppers were already in place, so it was a case of making sure they connected to something. I mulled over a few ideas of how to connect them up. I was wary of running loads of cable around as it would be horribly wasteful, and a pain to try and diagnose faults with. I wanted to use some sort of bus, a common method I’ve seen being to use a copper strip – one for positive and negative (or A and B for DCC, as it’s AC), then soldering all the droppers to it. I couldn’t find any such strip, so I went with another plan. I’ve basically joined droppers in twos and threes into a single wire. The joint is simply wound together, then soldered. Finally a heat-shrink is put on top to keep it protected.
These bigger main wires (there’s a few of them) were then soldered up into pairs, which went into screw terminal blocks, which all led up to a main point where the controller will connect. I need to add two other main power feeds which will go out to the addon boards, which will have a similar setup. It’s still slightly more cable than I’d like, but it’s fairly tidy, and it makes sense.
A few cable ties and screws held everything in place, and it’s done. I plugged up the DC controller and ran a loco up and down all the bits I expected to have power and they all work fine, even at lower speeds, so there seems to be good conductivity all through. I might check a multi-meter on it and see if there’s much voltage drop.
I’ve got one more point motor to fit, and then I’ll start running the power leads for the point motors. I’ll run them all to a central location. I have a feeling the labeller will be given plenty of use with all those wires!